Month: March 2017

I updated our website’s theme, so it’s a bit nicer to look at, and works better with phones and tablets. The banner image is a photo I took of Pukerua Bay from the air one morning in October 2015, from the Wellington Aero Club Piper MBG (pilot: Chris Forbes). Enjoy!

We had a good day on Saturday. The weather behaved, and three new people turned up (Mike, Alan and Simon) and then there were the usual suspects!

Gay and John Hay weeded the entrance area and spread mulch around. We carried on further along the track. Mike removed the wattles growing behind Pamela’s fence while we released ti kouka (cabbage trees) and harakeke (flax) at Reveg area 1. We then walked further again along the track and removed wild fennel and ragwort from where the track starts to go up the hill, approximately Reveg area 4.

We have confirmed planting dates for Sunday May 28th, June 25th and July 30th beginning at 9.30am.

Te Araroa track working bee: before and after.Te Araroa track working bee: before and after.Te Araroa track working bee: before and after.

It has been a while, perhaps too long; but although it may look like nothing has happened in the last year or two, your intrepid Residents’ Association has navigated a long and complex journey on your behalf, so that we can now, legally, finally, begin our planned community food forest!

Muri Reserve, with the community food forest site. Vehicle access from the end of Muri Road, along the station platform, across the ditch and to a gate in the fence, shown in yellow.

Porirua City Council are building vehicle access this month to the community food forest site on Muri Reserve. The access will go from the end of Muri Road, along the station platform, and across the ditch to a new gate in the fence, as shown in yellow on the map.

Getting the green light

To legally establish the community food forest, and to set it up to continue indefinitely as a community-stewarded project, required several things.

Firstly, we needed an organisation to take responsibility for stewarding the project, and maintaining its links to and engagement with the community. Initial discussions were around establishing a charitable trust, but the constitutional principles of the Residents’ Association to act and liaise on behalf of Pukerua Bay community projects was a natural fit.

Second, we needed a licence to garden on the Muri Reserve site from the Porirua City Council. Although this was more straightforward at the beginning, the process got a bit bogged down because of the Muri Reserve site boundary with the KiwiRail main trunk corridor. The licence was further complicated by the fact that the site is on reserve land, governed by The Reserves Act 1977, which requires more regulations and careful considerations of liability than would otherwise be the case. However, in June 2016, Te Komiti approved our application for the issuing of a licence for gardening, and this agreement has now been signed.

Thirdly, we needed to sign a scary-looking legal access agreement with KiwiRail for the vehicle access, which runs alongside the closed Muri Station platform. This arose from the gardening licence negotiations with council, and involved quite a lot of to-and-fro, and a good amount of persistence on our behalf from council staff. However this agreement is now signed and in place, and work to build the vehicle access will be commencing this month.

We also needed to lodge our shorter-term annual garden plan for the community food forest with the council parks department for approval, which is also happening this week. This is to ensure that we are adhering to local by-laws and so on, and not doing anything silly like planting convolvulus, or having a bonfire. (No, we can’t ever have bonfires on Muri Reserve land. Sorry.)

And finally, we needed to agree to pay public liability insurance. This is fairly standard nowadays unfortunately, due to changes in legislation around work safety, occupational health, ACC, local government liability and so on. The RA is now up for an annual insurance bill of a few hundred dollars a year to cover this, and would appreciate any fund-raising ideas or efforts from willing enthusiastic residents!

If you’re still reading this, well done; even more excruciating detail is available in the RA minutes, which you can browse here.

At the Residents’ Association AGM last year, NZTA presented a number of options for improving safety along the State Highway, and got some good feedback on the options. We heard back from them recently about the progress on the options.

They said:

“A pedestrian refuge near the intersection of Teihana Road and State Highway 1 will be investigated. The community feedback identified this as the first choice from the proposed safety improvement options presented. The exact location and layout of this refuge is now being developed. Once this work is done, we will share the plan with the community for final confirmation. The agreed refuge will then be programmed for construction.

The existing speed indicator devices (SID) will be replaced and two new SIDs installed along SH1 through Pukerua Bay.

The white fence next Pukerua Beach Road will be replaced and a new safety barrier installed. Replacing the fence with a much sturdier W-section barrier will improve safety for pedestrians, given the recent occurrence of errant vehicles hitting the existing fence.”

Two of our committee members had a meeting with NZTA today at the shops, to look at the potential site for a pedestrian refuge. Given the standards for pedestrian refuges, the need to retain the right turn into Teihana Rd and have sufficient space for 2-3 cars waiting to turn, the most practicable and suitable site would be across from the northern end of the white barrier at the car parks to a bit south of the stone wall on the Te Motu side of the highway. It may be that a temporary refuge is set out and monitored, via a camera mounted on the light standard by the toilets, over a week or so to see how successfully it works.

To aid line of sight on the Te Motu Rd side there may need to be some modification of the bank on that side, but not affecting the stone wall, if the fixture is permanent. One of the people on the team grew up in Pukerua Bay so is familiar with the issues.